Walter McGinn

Walter "Monk" McGinn (1816-1863) was an Irish-American who ran for the title of Sheriff of the New York Metropolitan Police in 1863. He won an impossible landslide victory thanks to the support of the Dead Rabbits gang; however, he was murdered by William Cutting, the leader of the rival Natives.

Biography
Walter McGinn, better known by his nickname "Monk", was born in 1816 in Ireland. McGinn's father had been killed in battle fighting for his people, dying fighting the Protestant English. He immigrated to the United States after the Great Famine, and he settled in New York City, which had a large Catholic Irish population. He was not compelled to join the Dead Rabbits gang and continue the Protestant-Catholic war in America, but he was hired by Priest Vallon as a mercenary on several occasions, and in 1846 he was offered $5 for every notch on his club during the climactic battle with William Cutting's Natives. The battle was a defeat, and he took what he was owed before leaving.

In 1862, he met with Vallon's son Amsterdam Vallon after Amsterdam rescued Cutting from an assassination attempt at a showing of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and he told Amsterdam that his father was a great man, although he failed to get him to fight against Cutting. However, he visited him in the catacombs of the Five Points after he failed to kill Cutting and was wounded, and he gave him Priest Vallon's razor, inspiring him to restart the Dead Rabbits and fight against the Natives once more. Vallon decided that a good way to get the Irish to support the Dead Rabbits would be to run a campaign for public office for an Irishman; he negotiated with Tammany Hall boss William M. Tweed to nominate an Irishman for public office, which would gain him the Irish vote. McGinn won an impossible landslide due to voter intimidation caused by the Dead Rabbits, so Cutting decided to retaliate. Cutting waited outside of McGinn's house, and he walked upstairs as McGinn turned around and threw a butcher's knife into his back. McGinn fell, mortally wounded, and Cutting cut a notch into McGinn's bat for McGinn himself before hitting him on the head with it, ending him.